KEY POINTS:
A steady flow of New Zealanders in jandals step over a well trod Warriors welcome mat at the Kiwi Fine Foods Shop in Brisbane on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
It's sunny and hot and the New Zealanders have come out for their Kiwi fix. It might be the L&P which has lured them, or the pineapple lumps, or perhaps the raro or the chocolate fish.
Kiwi Kees Scrimshaw and Aussie girlfriend Lauren Hogg are a classic Kaussie couple. They met while playing touch rugby and they banter, not fight. She wears the green and gold when there's a test match and he wears the black.
We head home with them to take photos on the huge lawn outside Lauren's mum's house in Mount Cotton, the suburb of Brisbane where they live with Lauren's folks, and they change into their respective jerseys and pour L&P into champagne flutes.
The lawn has a backdrop of eucalyptus trees where koalas often hang and when you walk on the grass you sidestep the copious wallaby droppings and keep an eye out for deadly brown snakes.
Kees, 34, wanders around this fraught piece of lawn in his jandals. He's not remotely bothered.
He moved to Australia by himself 12 years ago, aged 18. He was going nowhere and says he knew he was leaving for good.
Asked how he knew so young he wanted to become an Australian, he quickly corrects. He's not an Australian, he says.
"Hell, yeah," he's still a Kiwi.
It's just that he likes the weather, the work and the pay. He doesn't have a trade, working as a spare parts salesman, but he likes the job way better than working in the abattoir back home.
If he was still in Te Kuiti he'd probably still be in the meat works, working longer hours to earn the same sort of money.
He doesn't think Australians are happier than New Zealanders - he just thinks it's a lot easier to have a good lifestyle.
Kees was in the Kiwi Fine Foods Shop earlier in search of a silver fern sticker to put on his new ute.
Erana and Terangi Tamihana had turned up with son Taylor who is 8.
The plan wasn't to stay in Australia but when Terangi came over to get some money together for a deposit on a house, he liked it so much he wanted to stay so Erana moved over too, and she loves it.
Terangi is a scaffolder but back in the Hawke's Bay he also worked in a meat works. It's good to be out of that and to earn better money.
Erana has worked all sorts of jobs and says each has paid more than the same job would at home. Even when she worked in the laundry of a nursing home she took home A$18 ($NZ22) an hour.
"You can be blase about how you are with your money," she says.
They rent their house but have just bought a brand new Commodore car and have another car at home.
They have nice furnishings, the latest in internet technology, enough money to go on holiday when they want and still have money left over.
"Compared to where we're from and how we were living, this is like living like the rich and famous."
They don't think home is depressing so much as people are stuck in a rut.
Just one person moving to Australia can lead to a tidal wave of family following.
Erana's mum is here and a sister, plus nieces and nephews. "There's heaps now ... "
Erana says because so many Maori come over it is easier to hold on to your own culture. There are kapa haka competitions in Brisbane to see who will go home to compete in the nationals.
There are kohanga reo around though son Taylor has always attended a mainstream school.
Ask Taylor if he's an Aussie or a Kiwi and he shrugs. He was born in Australia, he doesn't mind which one he is. And ask Erana if it is difficult being here when she is tangata whenua, she says not really.
"Cause for me, mine [tangata whenua] is my family."
"But we're not Aussies," she adds, "and we like the Kiwi shop'cause we can get heaps of lollies."
YOU'D wonder why Norman Pahiri, 56, has come to Australia because when he turns up with wife Nikki, 53, he doesn't have a lot of good things to say.
The couple came over because Nikki has two children living in Australia but Norman says the couple will stay five years only.
He's struggling a bit with the different way of life and different attitudes of the locals.
"Well, it's ahhh, it's all arrogance and, you know, they the one."
Nikki says Australians can have a negative attitude towards Kiwis and they have encountered a lot of sheep jokes. You have to just put it back to them, says Norman, and while it might sound like joking, sometimes it's serious.
Aussies are sick of the number of Kiwis over here, they think.
They say "why don't you stay back in your own home", says Nikki so she jokes with them "oh, we're just here to take your money".
Norman says he likes the weather but, contrary to what others say, he finds it expensive.
Food and petrol have hiked and Australia has a lot of red tape for things like car registration, which all costs money.
Our country's the best, he says definitively. The air is fresher and it's green. Australia is so ... Norman searches for the right word then settles on "dull."
"It is, you know, everything's so brown and dull."
He rattles through other problems - spiders, snakes, sharks, cane toads, flies, mozzies - and I say I can see why you might irritate the Aussies.
Nikki laughs and says oh he does, he really irritates them. Norman just grins and says "bring it on".
Then Norman gets serious and says, actually, home can be depressing, particularly for Maori.
People do the same old thing and can't save any money. They're not furthering themselves, he says. "Out here you've got to fend for yourself, start using the old noggin a bit."
ACROSS town in Sinnamon Park we find Rob Levison wearing a loud checked shirt, sporting a deep tan and a youthful spiky haircut.
The Aucklander who has built up mining commodities company Industrea from a net worth of $2 million Australian to $350 million looks younger than his 50 years.
Brisbane suits him and he thinks he won't be returning to live in New Zealand. The opportunities are bigger here, he says, though he's keen to keep up his links with home and plans to join Kea, a network of expatriates around the world who use their skills to help their homeland prosper.
Levison wants to give back to New Zealand and points out he still cheers for the All Blacks.
But he feels very much at home in Brisbane. The climate's great, Queensland is in the midst of a mining boom so the economy is great, the public transport is great and there is a great spirit to the place.
Having lived here since 2002, he thinks his perception of New Zealand has changed and believes we should be more open to closer economic ties with Australia.
Levison had just lunched with a group of expat New Zealanders and the new Kiwi consulate-general, Nick Hurley. During lunch, conversation turned to CER [Closer Economic Relations] and people talked about how important this relationship was.
But while that might be true from a New Zealand perspective, Levison thinks few Australians even know what CER is and to some extent this sums up the relationship between the countries.
"It's very important for New Zealand because they're looking across this way."
New Zealand looks to Australia as Australia looks to America or China. Australia doesn't look back at New Zealand.
"So I guess if anything, I think it's a very hard row for New Zealand to hoe because you've got four million people who want the same level of infrastructure as Australia, the US or the UK.
"You've got two islands that are very difficult and you've got a smaller number of taxpayers every year as people get older, so I think it's a very difficult situation and I can only see in the longer term New Zealand benefiting from getting closer to Australia."
To those who think Australians are more positive and happy than New Zealanders, Levison says this depends on where you live. Queensland and Perth are benefiting from the mining boom but you won't find the same positivity in, say, Victoria or Adelaide.
WE SET off along the Bruce Highway and travel north to see why Kiwis are drawn to the famed Sunshine Coast. First, a pit stop at Australia Zoo where we find a good many New Zealanders are on the staff.
As Charlie the crocodile lazes in the sun near his pool and the sleepy koalas doze in their enclosure around the corner, Brett Adams, wearing his khaki Australia Zoo uniform, sits us down in the foodhall.
Originally from Wellington, Adams is human resources manager for the zoo and introduces some of the 26 Kiwis who work with him, Kiwis who have made the move to Australia, though, once again, none call themselves Australian.
Brett is the same. He has an Australian girlfriend and his mum and dad moved to nearby Mooloolaba a couple of years ago.
Brett is applying for dual citizenship because he wants to be able to vote. Politics are important he says. Still, he can't cut the ties with home.
A talented water polo player, he flies home to help coach the New Zealand senior team.
The realisation for Brett that there were better places to live came when he left home to go to Los Angeles on a sports scholarship. He admits that after windy Wellington it was a shock to realise you can live in a warm climate most of the year.
It's why he came to this part of Australia to live. Climate is so important. The warmth filters through your whole psyche.
Brett's read the stories about an exodus of Kiwis to Australia, partly for better pay, but he thinks people who come to this part come for the sun, sea and surf.
Phil Matheson, 37, arrives. He's the zoo's fleet manager and is formerly of Napier. He moved to Perth in 1997 on a working holiday then moved to Queensland because Perth gets sweltering hot and Queensland is so much closer to New Zealand.
He doesn't agree with those who say Australia's cheaper. He thinks it's more expensive because there are more taxes.
"But it's just so nice, it's not cold."
Phil, though, is not interested in an Australian passport. He's staunchly Kiwi and loves the rivalry between the two countries.
If Australia plays he always goes for the other team, unlike Brett who supports Australia except when they play Kiwis.
The men consider the differences between Australians and New Zealanders. The stand-out one is that New Zealand is miles ahead in terms of indigenous culture and acceptance of other cultures.
Australia can learn from Kiwis, they think. At home Te Reo is in the primary schools, signs are in English and Maori, and the national anthem is sung in English and Maori.
These steps are still far away in Australia. Did you know, Phil asks, that aborigines were still classed as native fauna until 1968?
"You see pictures of flowers and emus and alongside them aborigines, and it was like that until 1968, that was when they were able to vote. That's when they became an Australian 'person'. So, you know, what chance have they got? It's going to take years and years."
Later in the day, we meet Brett's parents, Jeff and Carol Adams, 56 and 55, in Mooloolaba. They took early retirement a couple of years ago and though Brett was already living here, they had always planned to retire to the place they had long been coming to for holidays. They say they will die here - but that's okay.
Says Jeff: "It's almost like a second life for us. You have your life in New Zealand and that was pretty full on for us because we worked hard. So here now is a different life, it's more of a retirement and enjoy your life."
They reckon they haven't had to try too hard to fit in because most of their family have followed them here.
Their two daughters moved over, then a son-in-law's brother came with his partner, then his sister came with her husband, then her husband's parents came. "See how it grows," says Carol. "So our little group of just our small family or just the two of us is now like 30."
They may apply for citizenship at some stage - but they'll never give up their Kiwi passports.
"Our granddaughter was born here but that doesn't make her a citizen until she's 10 years old."
Bec Duthler turns up to visit. She's tall and blond and Brett's girlfriend.
She says the Aussies don't mind all these Kiwis.
"Just another bloody Kiwi is usually the sentence," she says, but affectionately.
She went to a Titans versus Warriors match at the Gold Coast and marvelled because three quarters of the stand were wearing black "it was insane".
WE'D BEEN warned Mooloolaba was a bubble of elderly white Australia and as we drove into town the bowling green was alive with oldies and there wasn't a brown face in sight.
Mooloolaba is just down from Noosa and up from the Gold Coast. It's a mini version of the Gold Coast. The holiday apartment buildings are smaller and the residents are older and whiter.
It's also chocka with older Kiwis who have sought out the sun and temperate climate.
In fact, people really do go on about the weather. It's always sunny and warm, they say. Shame then the heavens opened during our short stay and by the time we got to our eighth floor sea view apartment at the Peninsula Beachfront Resort the wind was howling and it was pretty chilly.
Glenn and Marie Buckland, formerly of Hamilton, run the apartments and are a bit annoyed at the weather when it comes time for their photograph to be taken.
Marie was looking all glam with her gold jewellery and brightly painted toenails and Glenn, who the locals affectionately call Bucko, has one of those deep tans which looks as if it reaches into his bones.
They have a bit of the look of the new rich about them but when they open their mouths out roll throaty big laughs and warm personalities.
In Hamilton Marie was a hairdresser and Glenn a teacher. The couple then ran a motel for several years. In Mooloolaba they own the management rights to the apartment building and have done very nicely.
Happiness, in fact, is written all over their faces. The Bucklands say they remain Kiwis first and foremost but it's clear they have a fierce pride and patriotism for their adopted home.
The couple took a bit of a risk when they decided to follow their dream and move to Australia. It was the 1990s and the idea of holiday apartments [there are no hotels here] was new for Mooloolaba.
When the chance arose to buy the management rights for this building they jumped, though it was tough raising the $1.6 million needed. They think if they sold today it would fetch millions.
But they're not planning on selling for a while because son Scott has now moved over and runs the business while they live the life of Riley.
Marie says the move has not only given the couple a fantastic lifestyle but she has also gained the freedom and courage to try things she would not have at home, like learning to dive and to sail a yacht.
Kind of on a whim, they went to the Sydney Boat Show and bought a 41-foot yacht, got some lessons and sailed it back to Mooloolaba then lived on board for three years.
Do they miss anything about Hamilton? Not really, they say.
At the Mooloolaba waterfront we meet Gus Browning, an archetypal Aussie. He's tall and bouncy, he talks like an Aussie and tells constant jokes.
But he blanches at being called an archetypal Aussie. This is because he's a Kiwi. Though he will probably die in Australia, he can't quite relinquish his Kiwi heart or his New Zealand passport.
This is despite living in Australia since 1989 and raising two Australian children, Jack, 9, and Curtis, 3.
Yes, they are growing up Aussies. Yes, he supports the All Blacks and they support the Wallabies. It really doesn't matter, he says.
Gus is marketing manager at Underwater World in Mooloolaba and once worked with Steve and Terri Irwin at Australia Zoo in the days when Australians didn't really know who the crocodile hunter was.
His office is further along the wharf with lovely views of the harbour and he tells us, eyes shining, the other day a dolphin cruised by the window with her baby.
It's the best office in the world, he reckons.
He was 21 and came to Australia for a surfing trip and never went home. He truly loves New Zealand, he says, but he remembers not liking the Government and that there wasn't any work.
When he arrived in Australia he kept thinking he wanted to go home until about two years later he realised he didn't.
Part of it, he thinks, were the racial tensions in New Zealand in the 1980s.
He'd had a rough start to life in Mt Maunganui and had lived on the streets for a while.
He recalls a hidden tension, but the type you don't experience in Australia.
"It's like, you're not looking over your shoulder. You're not having to put that front up as a young fella in your 20s of 'hey bro, what's happening', that sort of crap just to try to fit in."
He finds it hard to explain but says other Kiwis also feel more relaxed. He concedes Mooloolaba is very much white Australia, saying if you can spot an aborigine up here good luck, and that this is an aspect of Australia he doesn't much like.
"They treat them like they're nothing ... like they're not even human."
He thinks Kiwis are very different to Australians. A lot more reserved. "I think we'll look at things a bit more, where Aussies will open their mouth before their brain goes into gear. It's like 'well hang on, maybe I shouldn't have said that but I've said it now so I'm going to stick by that'."
Perhaps it's the convict thing which shapes those differences, their brashness and loudness, he muses.
"They're knockabout people but they've got hearts of gold underneath.
"As much as they come across as a bunch of bloody idiots, some of them, they'll look after you when it comes to the crunch. It comes down to the Anzac thing - we give each other shit but if there's a war we'll stick together like glue."
Back down the Bruce Highway, we head to another stretch of Australian coastline with a magical pull for New Zealanders.
Hohua Mohi and Phillipa Moore talk to their kids in Maori in their rented four-bedroom Gold Coast home in a new subdivision in Upper Coomera, half an hour from the beach and away from the high rises.
Hohua makes coffee in big mugs decorated with Maori motifs. The ta moko artist is homesick for his whanau in Rotorua and the family won't be staying more than two years.
Hohua is big, warm and hospitable. He offers crumpets and brings out Homebake Cookies from a pantry stocked with Bell tea.
Hohua likes Australians well enough, saying they're like people everywhere: "You get a lot of choice ones but you get a lot of idiots too."
Australians are different, though, they muse, but this is their country and you have to be humble.
"You've got to respect the people that are already here 'cause I'd hate it if I was at home and someone trampled all over what we know," says Hohua.
Phillipa says sometimes she feels a bit uncomfortable because Maori in Australia get better treatment than the aborigines.
But there is a lot to like about Australia. One thing is the family friendly policies - benefits exist to help families in all sorts of areas, from paying grandparents to look after the kids, to financial help in getting kids to school and to sport, to family friendly work places with creches.
All these great things aren't why so many New Zealanders come over, though, they say. The key issue is that back home there are fewer jobs, the pay is low, and the student loans are horrendous.
New Zealand has put a huge tax on people for getting an education, says Hohua, "and then they wonder why we leave.
"We leave so we can pay it off and then in the meantime, when we're away paying it off, they're getting people from everywhere else to come and do the jobs."
Maori, and there are many Maori on the Gold Coast, do well in Australia and Hohua loves that they are so proud of their culture.
"In town you'll see a thousand Maori T-shirts walking around, mokos everywhere, because a lot of Maori like to say 'look, I'm here but I'm a Maori'."
Perhaps they get along with Australians so well because they are very proud too, he says. Australians are every bit as patriotic, possibly more so, and staunchly support Australian-made products even to their detriment, he laughs.
"See, I would have thought NZ ice cream and everything would be flooding the market here but they get their Aussie yucky ice cream and yucky teas and chips [Hohua's giggling] knowing full well it's not as nice as ours [everyone's falling about laughing now] and we pay A$7 for a packet of Twisties and A$10 for Bell tea."
Matiu Sullivan from Auckland has popped round to see Hohua and Phillipa after finishing work.
He's 29 and a scaffolder. His workmates are cool, he says, but here's a difference between us: "All Aussies love the pub, bro. We knocked off at 8 this morning and they all went to the pub, 64 of them."
Matiu averages about A$1500 a week, in the hand, for a 38-hour week.
"That's why I'm here."
He came over four years ago for a 21st and never went home. Back home he did "nothing." The plan is not to stay forever, though he will stay for a while yet so that when he goes home he will have some money in the bank.
Otherwise you're just back to where you started, he says, though if he could earn the same money back home he'd be on the next plane.
The truth is, in a lot of ways coming to Australia has set his life on course.
His family was gang-affiliated and he thinks he would have ended up a statistic if he'd stayed. When he does go home he'll be able to stay out of the gangs now, he says. This is what Australia has given him and he's grateful.
